WHAT IS IMPERIALISM? The Latin word imperium means “rule.” An empire is an extensive territory, especially an aggregate of many States, under the authority of an emperor or empress or one dominant State. Empires are much older than Capitalism. Imperialism is the despotic or arbitrary rule of one State over another. It is the belief in the acquisition of colonies and dependencies, or the extension of a State’s dominance through military conquest, coerced trade, domineering foreign investment or alien political control. Religious missionary activity often accompanies imperialism. The Philippines are a creation of the Spanish Empire whose army and navy agglomerated 7,107 islands with their disparate peoples speaking over 170 languages into a single colony governed from Manila and ruled from Madrid from 1565 to 1898. While a republic rests on the consent of the governed, an empire depends on coercion regardless of the wishes of its subjects. Empires can be directly ruled by the Mother Country or indirectly ruled by collaborating local elites and police serving the imperial State. Historians disagree on whether imperialism was profitable. The military, administrators, missionaries and certain investors did benefit, but there is debate whether the subjects of the Mother Country benefited except, perhaps, psychologically as proud citizens of a Great Power. Another debate centers on how – some say even whether -- less-developed societies benefited from rule by more technologically advanced imperial powers. Empires are as much about attitudes and power as about markets and profits.

WORDS & WAR Changing Names for a contested war

Language is one of war’s battlefields. Words can disguise, enflame, excuse or inspire. Capt. Alfred T. Mahan, the author of The Influence of Seapower upon History (1890), used the phrase “outward impulses” rather than “colonize,” “liberate” instead of “occupy” and “pacify” rather that “conquer.” The word “civilize” was used instead of “subjugate” when the U.S. described its war aims in the Philippines.

Known in its own day in the U.S. as the Philippine Insurrection, later generations called it the Philippine-American War. Today most American textbooks call it the Philippine War. Filipinos, however, call it the War of Philippine Independence, a war they lost after great sacrifices. It was a struggle that helped shape Filipino national consciousness and that also revealed the deep divisions within Filipino society.

Insurrectos or Revolutionaries?

U.S. leaders called the Filipinos insurrectos, Spanish for “insurgent” or “rebel.” But this is a loaded term because it implies rebellion against legitimate authority and the Filipinos did not consider the U.S. occupation legitimate just because the U.S. had paid defeated Spain $20 million for the archipelago in the Treaty of Paris. Sgt. Harlow used the word “insurgents” in his diary.

Racial Slurs and Dehumanizing the Enemy

White American soldiers dehumanized their enemy by calling them “niggers,” “ladrones” (thieves), or “gooks.” To us the ‘n’ word is offensive and for that reason this exhibit replaces it with “[Filipino]” wherever it appears in Sgt. Harlow’s diary.

“Almost without exception, soldiers, and also many officers, refer to the natives in their presence as ‘niggers’, and the natives are beginning to understand what ‘nigger’ means.”

Maj. Cornelius Gardener, U.S. military governor of Tayabas, 1902

WHY DID PRESIDENT MCKINLEY DECIDE TO KEEP THE PHILIPPINES? Republican President William McKinley entered office in 1897 opposing intervention in the Cuban revolution. But pressure from his own party in Congress led him to declare war with Spain over Cuba. The Democrats were generally against intervention in Cuba. White southern Democrats did not want new non-white territories and Louisiana sugar planters wanted to keep cheaper Cuban sugar out of the U.S. McKinley was not sure where the Philippines were when Dewey destroyed the Spanish fleet. At first McKinley thought of retaining only a coaling station in Manila Bay, then occupying the island of Luzon, and finally keeping the entire archipelago. Staying in the Philippines suddenly made annexing Hawaii important as well as securing Midway, Wake, and Guam as coaling stations across the Pacific. A famous account of McKinley’s thoughts comes from an interview with five Methodist ministers on November 16, 1899 reported by Gen. James F. Rusling in The Christian Advocate on January 22, 1903. “I didn’t want the Philippines…. I did not know what to do with them. …. I went down on my knees and prayed Almighty God for light and guidance.” McKinley then described his thinking. “(1) That we could not give them back to Spain – that would be cowardly and dishonorable; (2) that we could not turn them over to France or Germany – our commercial rivals in the Orient – that would be bad business and discreditable; (3) that we could not leave them to them-selves – they were unfit for self-government – and they would soon have anarchy and misrule over there worse than Spain’s was; and (4) that there was nothing left for us to do but to take them all, and to educate the Filipinos, and uplift and civilize and Christianize them, and by God’s grace do the very best we could by them, as our fellow-men for whom Christ also died.” Some historians are skeptical of this account. “Christianize” does not appear in any other McKinley statement. McKinley was assassinated by an anarchist in 1901 and left no memoires. Rusling’s account was not corroborated by any other participant at the meeting. Richard F. Hamilton, President McKinley, War and Empire, vol. 2, 2007, p. 81.

The United States in the Philippines 1898‐1915 

1902

February 15 The battleship U.S.S. Maine explodes in Havana Harbor.

1898 

April 19 Congress by a vote of 311 to 6 in the House, and 42 to 35 in the Senate, adopts a joint resolution for war with Spain. President McKinley signs it the next day and calls for 125,000 volunteers for 1 year of active duty.

May 25The first U.S. volunteer troops leave San Francisco for the Philippines

June 15Hundreds of citizens assemble in Boston to oppose the annexation of the Philippines and organize the Anti-Imperialist movement.

April Filipinos resume their independence struggle against Spain.

December 10 In the Treaty of Paris, Spain frees Cuba, cedes Porto Rico and Guam to the U.S., and sells the Philippines to the U.S. for $20 million.

1899

February 4-5 U.S. troops fire the first shots of the war, killing three Filipino soldiers triggering fighting between U.S. troops and Filipino independence forces.

1900

February There were over 1,000 engagements between U.S. and Filipino forces in the first year of war.

November 13Filipinos switch from conventional to guerilla war.

1901

February Mark Twain publishes “To the Person Sitting in Darkness”, his satire on U.S. imperialism in the Philippines, in the North American Review.

May 1 Admiral Dewey destroys the Spanish fleet in Manila Bay.

September 15The Congress of the First Philippine Republic creates the first republican constitution in Asia.

January 31 to June 28 Senate Committee on the Philippines chaired by imperialist Republican Henry Cabot Lodge conducts hearings on the war.  

July 4 President Theodore Roosevelt declares victory in the Philippines but a guerrilla war continues until 1915.

KEY MAPS

1. Map of the China Seas showing Philippine Islands and Adjacent Countries with European Colonial Possessions under their National Flags, 1898. Harper’s History of the War in the Philippines, 1900 / San Francisco Public Library With the exception of Siam (Thailand) and Imperial Japan (which had its own colony in Formosa and after 1905 in Korea) all of Southeast Asia was colonized by Europeans and the U.S. Imperial China was a special case, still nominally independent but with British, Portuguese, German, Russian and soon Japanese enclaves along her coast. Here the Philippines are shown under both the Spanish and U.S. flags since the Treaty of Paris was not signed until December 10, 1898.

2. The Relative Sizes of the United States and their Possessions. Cram’s Unrivaled Atlas of the World, Chicago, 1911 / John Newmeyer, Ph.D. This 1911 map helped Americans get a sense of the size of their “insular territories” (colonies). The Philippines reach across the Rocky Mountains and is about the size of Montana. The Hawaiian Islands stretch from West Virginia to Wyoming. Alaska is twice the size of Texas.

3. United States’ Record of Territorial Expansion to 1904. Cram’s Unrivaled Atlas of the World, Chicago, 1911 / John Newmeyer, Ph.D. This diagram represents “the building of our stable national territory pyramid” from the American Revolution to 1904. Each layer is credited to the president in office at the time of conquest or annexation. From base to tip the layers are:

(1) 1783 the 13 seaboard colonies and lands from the Appalachians to the Mississippi

(2) 1803 the Louisiana Purchase from Napoleon’s France (3) 1819 the purchase of Spanish Florida (4) 1845 the annexation of the Republic of Texas (5) 1848 the Cession of the Southwest and California after the Mexican-American War (6) 1853 the Gadsden Purchase of New Mexico and Arizona south of the Gila River (7) 1867 the purchase of Alaska from Imperial Russia (8) 1898 the annexation of the Republic of Hawaii (9) 1898 the acquisition of the Philippines, Porto Rico and Guam after the Spanish-American War (10) 1899 the acquisition of American Samoa at the Congress of Berlin (11) 1903 the perpetual lease of the Panama Canal Zone from the Republic of Panama

Note: The Guantánamo Naval Base in Cuba leased in 1903 is not included. Today the Philippines and the Panama Canal Zone are no longer U.S. territories.

4. Commercial Chart of the World. New Mercantile Marine Atlas of the World, 1905 David Rumsey Map Collection, www.davidrumsey.com

This map puts the Pacific Ocean, not the Atlantic, at its center and traces the major global trade routes in the 1900s. The vast British Empire is in red, France in light purple, Portugal in green, Germany in light orange, Japan in outlined light purple, the Netherlands in outlined light orange, Russia in light green and the U.S. in yellow. This was how the world was both divided and connected until the global struggle of World Wdevastated Europe, destroyed or sapped empires, and drew the U.S. into European and Pacific conflicts that lasted 30 years. By 1945 the United States and the Soviet Union were the world’s only Great Powers.

ar I in 1914-1918 that

Map of the China Seas showing Philippine Islands and Adjacent Countries with European Colonial Possessions under their National Flags, 1898

Figure 1: Harper’s History of the War in the Philippines, 1900 / San Francisco Public Library

The Relative Sizes of the United States and their Possessions

Figure 2: Cram’s Unrivaled Atlas of the World, Chicago, 1911 / John Newmeyer, Ph.D.

United States’ Record of Territorial Expansion to 1904

Figure 3: Cram’s Unrivaled Atlas of the World, Chicago, 1911 / John Newmeyer, Ph.D.

Commercial Chart of the World

Figure 4: New Mercantile Marine Atlas of the World, 1905 / David Rumsey Map Collection

WAR & DISSENT THE U.S. IN THE PHILIPPINES, 1898-1915

A Free Exhibition at the Presidio of San Francisco

Officers’ Club Exhibition Hall 50 Moraga Avenue at Arguello

www.presidio.gov

October 22, 2008 to February 22, 2009 Wednesday to Sunday, 11 a.m. to 5 p.m.

The Spanish-American War of 1898 -- and the Philippine War that immediately followed it -- were turning points in the United States’ role in the world and had a great impact on the Presidio of San Francisco. The war in the Philippines also triggered strong dissent within the U.S. as the nation changed from a republic based on the consent of the governed to the possessor of a colonial empire. This exhibit of photographs, San Francisco monuments, diaries, letters, political cartoons, recordings, maps and flags looks at the Spanish- American and Philippine wars from several points of view, including Filipino points of view, in nine themed galleries. Gallery 1. Monuments without Memories Dewey Monument in Union Square, The California Volunteers Monument at Market and Dolores, The McKinley Monument in Golden Gate Park, Lombard Gate war trophies, San Francisco city flag Most San Franciscans are unaware that several of the city’s major public monuments memorialize the Spanish-American and Philippine wars and President William McKinley. This introductory gallery will feature large blow-ups of vintage postcards of these civic monuments and tell their forgotten -- and now contested -- stories. San Francisco’s city flag with its motto “Gold in Peace and Iron in War” also had its genesis in this era (1900). Gallery 2. The Spanish-American War of 1898 A Two Front War in the Caribbean and the Pacific The first half of the second gallery sketches the creation of a modern navy, the role of domestic politics that led to the war including the roles of the Cuban independence lobby, domestic pressure groups, party struggles in the Congress, Democratic President Grover Cleveland, Republican President William McKinley, the mysterious destruction of the battleship U.S.S. Maine, the two fronts of the Spanish-American War of 1898 including the Cuban and Puerto Rico campaigns and the destruction of the Spanish fleet in Manila Harbor, and the occupation of Guam by the U.S.

2

Navy. The U.S. Naval Base at Guantánamo, Cuba is a legacy of the Spanish-American War. A sidebar recounts why President McKinley decided to buy the Philippines from Spain. Galleries 2 & 3 From the Presidio to the Philippines and Back Sergeant Hiram L. Harlow’s Diary and Photographs, 1898-99 Sergeant Harlow was an Army volunteer from Iowa who trained at Camp Merritt in San Francisco’s Richmond District and at the Presidio. His day-by-day diary, plus 80 photos that he collected on his journey including some battle images, were recently donated to the Presidio Trust Library. The second part of Gallery 2 and Gallery 3 trace Sgt. Harlow’s experiences in training, transport, battle against the Filipino independence forces and his return to California via Japan. Sgt. Harlow’s language reflects the racial attitudes of the 1890s that were the social context of the war. Gallery 4. The Wars for Philippine Independence From Conventional to Guerrilla Warfare, 1899-1915 The first part of this gallery surveys the complex nature of the Philippines and the role of the Spanish Empire in forging the colony. Next is the long struggle for Philippines independence from Spain. Sidebars introduce early Filipino independence leaders. The American war against the independence forces began in February 1899 and shifted from conventional warfare to guerrilla war after November 1899. The bitterly fought guerrilla war did not end until 1915 in the southern islands. The last panel covers atrocities during the war and Lieut. Gen. Nelson A. Miles’ 1902 report. Two Commanders President Emilio Aguinaldo and General Frederick Funston, 1901 The second part of this gallery looks at Brig. Gen. Frederick Funston, a famous name at the Presidio and in San Francisco, and the Macabebe Scouts who captured Filipino independence leader President Emilio Aguinaldo in 1901 through a ruse. Funston became a celebrity in the U.S. press. This gallery tells the stories of these two leaders and their dramatic encounter. Gallery 5. The Lopez Family in Revolution and War This gallery looks at the war through excerpts from letters written by the six brothers and four sisters of the prominent Lopez family in 1901-1902. Mariano Lopez served in the Malolos Congress. Sixto Lopez served as the secretary to the commission that went to Washington seeking U.S. recognition of the Philippine Republic. Cipriano Lopez became an officer in Aguinaldo’s revolutionary army. Other members of the family strove to remain neutral as they realized the futility of opposing U.S. power. The letters witness the anguish of Filipinos as war and cholera ravaged their country. Bindlestiff Studio, a San Francisco-based Filipino-American theatrical group, will stage “Shadows of War” based on the Lopez letters which will be performed four times during the run of the exhibit.

3

Gallery 6. Cartoons and Conquest The “Yellow Press” and Racial Attitudes at the Turn of the Century By 1899, new technologies allowed mass-circulation newspapers to print full-color political cartoons drawn by commercial artists. These cartoons were graphically compelling and display the racial attitudes that lay behind the war. This gallery presents a selection of original cartoons lent by Filipino-American Bay Area collectors of Filipiniana. While the “Yellow Press” is often cited as one of the chief spurs to war, recent historical studies take a more nuanced view of their role. Gallery 7. The Anti-Imperialist League’s Dissent: From Republic to Empire Many American opinion leaders opposed the permanent occupation of the Philippines and saw it as a fateful step away from a republic based on the consent of the governed and toward a colonial empire. This gallery presents the 1899 Platform of the American Anti-Imperialist League and its defense of government based on the consent of the governed. Gallery 8. Voices of Dissent: Mark Twain and the Anti-Imperialist League, the African-American Press A roster of key dissenters is accompanied by recorded excerpts by Antenna Audio from Mark Twain’s “To the Person Sitting in Darkness” excerpts from The Anti-Imperialist constitutional argument, and the dissenting African-American press. The imperialist point-of-view is presented in Senator Albert Beveridge’s “In Support of an American Empire.” Gallery 9. The Presidio Comes of Age as the U.S. Becomes a Pacific Ocean Power Montgomery Street Barracks, East and West Cantonments, Letterman Army Hospital, Pershing Hall, Old Post Gymnasium, Spanish cannons at the Lombard Gate The Philippine War had a great impact on the Presidio of San Francisco. The post became the chief stateside base for troops who fought in the war. Letterman Hospital was established to care for those wounded in the Philippines and those who contracted tropical diseases. San Francisco and the Presidio became the principal gateway for the deepening U.S. involvement in the Pacific. At the same time that the U.S. Army fought in the Philippines, the U.S. Navy took Guam from Spain, occupied Midway and Wake Islands, and divided the Samoan Islands with the German Empire. In 1898, the U.S. also annexed the Hawaiian Islands. In 1900, U.S. troops from the Philippines were part of an international force that suppressed the anti-foreign “Boxers” in Peking. In 1901 the U.S. created the Panama Canal Zone and the canal was excavated by the U.S. Army. In 1907-08 President Theodore Roosevelt sent the U.S. Navy on a round the world tour to demonstrate American military power. The Caribbean became an “American lake” and the U.S. was now a Great Power engaged with Asia.

War & Dissent: The U.S. IN THE PHILIPPINES, 1898-1915 

An Exhibition at the Presidio of San Francisco Exhibition Hall October 22nd, 2008 to February 22nd, 2009 

Gallery 5

The Lopez Family in Revolution and War 

Gallery 7

Anti- Imperialist

League 

Gallery 6

Cartoons & Conquest Two Commanders:

Funston & Aguinaldo

Gallery 8

Mark Twain & Voices of Dissent 

Gallery 4

The Wars for Philippine Independence 

Gallery 9

The Presidio Comes of Age as the U.S. Becomes a Pacific Ocean Power 

Gallery 1

Monuments without Memories  

Gallery 2

The Spanish - American War: A Two Front War 

Exit

Enter

Resources on the U.S. in the Philippines books, websites, videos and lesson plans

I. Books call numbers refer to SF Public Library, Civic Center / Filipino American Center on 3rd floor

David Joel Steinberg, The Philippines: A Singular and Plural Place. (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1982), paperback. Good general introduction to the peoples, places and cultures. 991.4 St34p John A. Larkin, Sugar and the Origins of Modern Philippines Society. (Quezon City, Philippines: New Day Publishers, 2001). The history of the deep impact of sugar growing on Philippine society. 338.1736 L3262s 2001 Maria Serena I. Diokno, ed., Voices & Scenes of the Past: The Philippine-American War Retold. (Philippines: Jose W. Diokno Foundation, 1999). Photographs and quotes from the war years. Marrion Wilcox, Harper's History of the War in the Philippines. (New York & London: Harper & Brothers, 1900), hard cover. A monumental, well-illustrated work written while the war was still going on. f991.4 W643h The Story of the Lopez Family: A Page from the History of the War in the Philippines. (Boston: James H. West Co., 1904), hard cover. Reprinted with a foreword by Jim Zwick (Makati, Philippines: Platypus Publishing, 2001). Letters written in 1901-1902 by members of the elite Lopez family to one another when three of the Lopez brothers were imprisoned by Gen. J. Franklin Bell. Translated from the Spanish and published by anti-imperialist Bostonians. Pierre N. Beringer, ex-war correspondent, "The Newspapers and the Philippines," Overland Monthly, Vol. XLIV, No. 1, July, 1904, pp. 117-118. A typical imperialist critique of the anti-imperialists. Abe Ignacio, Enrique de Cruz, Jorge Emmanuel and Helen Toribio, The Forbidden Book: The Philippine-American War in Political Cartoons. (San Francisco: T’Boli Publishing, 2004), paperback. Racial attitudes of the time in graphic images. 959.9031 F747 Mark Twain’s Weapons of Satire: Anti-Imperialist Writings on the Philippine-American War. Jim Zwick, ed. (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1992), hard cover. 991.4 T911m Jim Zwick, Confronting Imperialism: Essays on Mark Twain and the Anti-Imperialist League. (West Conshohoken, PA: Infinity Publishing, 2007), paperback. Robert L. Beisner, Twelve Against Empire: The Anti-Imperialists, 1898-1900 (Chicago: U. of Chicago Press, 1992). George P. Marks, III, ed., The Black Press Views American Imperialism (1898-1900). (New York: Arno Press, 1971). African-American newspaper reports and commentary on Cuba, McKinley, the Philippines and Hawaii. 973.89 M342b Richard F. Hamilton, President McKinley, War and Empire. Vol. 1 President McKinley and the Coming of War, 1898, Vol. 2 President McKinley and America’s “New Empire.” (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 2006, 2007), hard cover. The most recent objective study. Daniel B. Schirmer and Stephen Rosskamm Shalom, The Philippines Reader: A History of Colonialism, Neocolonialism, Dictatorship, and Resistance. (Boston: South End Press, 1987), paperback. 959.903 P538 David J. Silbey, A War of Frontier and Empire: The Philippine-American War, 1899-1902. (New York: Hill and Wang, 2008), paperback. 959.9031 Si328w Frank Hindman Golay, Face of Empire: United States-Philippines Relations, 1898-1946 (Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 1998), paperback. Paul Kramer, “The Water Cure: Debating Torture and Counterinsurgency a Century Ago,” The New Yorker, February 25, 2008, pp. 38-43.

II. Websites

Atlas de Filipinas, 1899 Prepared by the Jesuit Observatory in Manila and published in Washington in 1900. David Rumsey Map Collection. www.davidrumsey.com #1054000 Philippine Declaration of Independence of June 12, 1898. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philippine_Declaration_of_Independence Senator Albert Beveridge (Republican, Indiana), “In Support of an American Empire” Senate speech in favor of colonizing the Philippines, 1900. www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/ajb72.htm Lodge Committee Hearings on the Philippines, 1902. Witnesses included both pro- and anti-imperialists and testimony on torture by the U.S. Army. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lodge_committee Edwin Burritt Smith, “Republic or Empire with Glimpses of ‘Criminal Aggression’” Anti-Imperialist League, 1900. The constitutional arguments against creating a U.S. colony in the Philippines. www.archive.org/stream/republicorempire00smit/republicorempire00smit_djvu.txt Address to the People of the United States by the Anti-Imperialist League, November 19, 1898. http://www.historyillustrated.com/ai/ailtexts/ailadd98.html Mark Twain, “To the Person Sitting in Darkness” an attack on imperialism and the Philippine War published in the North American Review, February 1901. Full text at: http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/To_the_Person_Sitting_in_Darkness Jim Zwick, “The Anti-Imperialist League and the Origins of Filipino-American Oppositional Solidarity.” http://www.historyillustrated.com/ai/ail/zwick98a_d.html Arnaldo Dumindin, “Philippine-American War, 1899-1902”. A Filipino point of view; extensively illustrated with period photographs. http://www.freewebs.com/philippineamericanwar/background.htm

III. Videos American Social History Project at the City University of New York, Savage Acts: Wars, Fairs and Empire, 1898-1904. The Philippine War and the World’s Fairs of the period. Teacher resources at www.ashp.cuny.edu/savageacts Library of Congress, The Spanish-American War in Motion Pictures http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/sawhtml/sawhome.html

IV. Lesson Plan Resources The Philippine-American War Lesson Plan. Co-Published with the Organization of American Historians and the National Center for History in the Schools which can be purchased at http://www.oah.org/pubs/teachingunits/index.html. You can view a preview here: http://www.learner.org/channel/courses/amerhistory/pdf/Philippine-War_L-One.pdf Beyond Manifest Destiny: America Enters the Age of Imperialism. Published by the Choices Program; a national education initiative based at Brown University's Watson Institute for International Studies. Can be purchased at: http://www.choices.edu/resources/detail.php?id=22.

V. Specialty Bookstore ARKIPELAGO: The Filipino Bookstore 953 Mission Street (near Fifth), San Francisco, CA 94103 (415) 777-0108 order@arkipelagobooks.com